Our President
Forum 2002 Address
To Shorten the Shadow: Providing High Expectations in Education
Con't
Today those words still haunt us. In many places we are two societies. One well off, the other shortchanged. One enriched by opportunities to learn and to reach higher, the other impoverished by barriers that hold back even the most talented. One gleaming with new buildings, the other with dilapidated, outdated buildings that are a museum to educational neglect.
America cannot be America if educationally we continue to be separate and unequal. T.S. Eliot said that between the idea and the reality falls the shadow. In many of our schools across this country we still see that long and dark shadow.
From my own personal experiences I know that the shadow can be shortened. When I was in the fourth grade, my parents learned that I couldn't read. What I learned from that experience was that they did two things that were very smart. One was that they had high expectations for their son, and the other was that they were willing to work very hard and make me work very hard to overcome that learning disability. My mom intuitively said something that was wonderful. I have a sister who is five years older than me, who never made anything but As, and was Phi Beta Kappa. My mom used to always say to me, you're just as smart as your sister, but in a different way. And my dad made me memorize a dictionary that he got so I'd learn to spell and understand, and be able to read words. That's high expectations.
I became governor of a state that had half a billion dollar deficit. Our schools were considered among the worst in the country. But we were able to create the best technology in the schools in the country, and we took our teacher salaries from forty-ninth to thirty-first. We had 75 percent of our students in new and improved physical facilities, and the unemployment in our state went from 9 percent to 6 percent, and that a $500 million deficit went to $100 million surplus. I can see and know that you can shrink that shadow.
In my office I have pictures of my family, and I have a picture with myself with Ruth Simmons, the president of Brown University. I'm going to tell you a story that I read about her, and it's why I keep that picture in my office. Ruth Simmons was one of 12 children of a farm worker. I believe the first in her family to go to college, a small college in Louisiana. In her junior year she was invited to go to Wellesley. She was a French major. After two months in that course in which she had never heard French spoken before, she went to the teacher and said, "I just cannot keep up and I want to change."
